President Obama speaks to workers at ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company on Nov. 14, 2013, in Cleveland. / Michael Francis McElroy, Getty Images

by Donovan Slack, Gannett Washington Bureau

by Donovan Slack, Gannett Washington Bureau

Republicans are launching a new wave of attacks on congressional Democrats after President Obama pointed out that he's not the only one who promised Americans they could keep their insurance under Obamacare.

"And, by the way, I think it's very important for me to note that there are a whole bunch of folks up in Congress and others who made this statement," he said Thursday, adding that they shouldn't be blamed. "It's not on them. It's on us."

Within 48 hours, Republicans had scoured public releases, news articles and town hall transcripts to unearth pledges made by 60 Democratic House members and 27 Democratic senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid ("If you like the health care you have, you can keep it") and Health Committee Chairman Tom Harkin ("If you like a plan, you get to keep it").

The GOP plans to hold them accountable for those promises, driving the message through November with the hope of gaining an edge in the midterm elections.

"The law is called Obamacare, but every House and Senate Democrat over the last four years has voted over and over again to ensure that the law would operate this way," Rory Cooper, communications director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Saturday. "And while the president shoulders a lot of the blame, so do his Democratic counterparts in Congress."

For their part, Democrats say the elections are still a year away and as long as the website is fixed and people have insurance they like by then, the GOP message just won't resonate.

"There's a great amount of hypocrisy here," Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Czin said Saturday. "Republicans were for a fix until the president was for a fix and now they're going right back to repeal the law, which poll after poll shows the American people want to work."

In any case, the barrage provides Republicans with a chance to coalesce around something they all agree on - criticizing Obamacare - after being divided and taking a beating in the polls over the recent government shutdown.

In a blog post titled, "What I meant to say was â?¦," House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy cataloged statements from Democratic House members dating back to April 2009, including from DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schlutz.

"Let me be clear: If you like your current plan, you'll be able to keep it," she said in July 2009, when opposition to reform was gathering steam in town halls across the country.

Over at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Deputy Executive Director Matt Canter brushed aside the attacks, saying that Senate Democrats are working to fix the law while Republicans simply want to go back to the pre-Obamacare system, when insurers were allowed to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

"While Democrats are working to make fixes to the law, every single Republican Senate candidate in the country wants to let insurance companies abuse consumers," he said. "We're confident that the Republican proposals to discriminate against patients is going to be more of a political problem for them in an election."